Book News
Twilight books often challenged.
Novelist Stephenie Meyer has joined J.K. Rowling on the list of the most frequently challenged books. According to the 2009 American Library Association’s list, The Twilight Saga series was challenged for various reasons, including “sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group.”
Several other young-adult authors join Meyer, including Lauren Myracle’s Internet Girls series, Robert Cormier’s “The Chocolate War” and Carolyn Macker’s “The Earth, My Butt and Other Big, Round Things.” Myracle’s series captured the top spot for “nudity, sexually explicit, offensive language, unsuited to age group, drugs.” Meyer seems to be the only fantasy author on the list.
The library association reported that Rowling’s Harry Potter books have been the most challenged of the decade due to discontent and accusations of “satanism,” as well as “anti-family themes.”
Note that Rowling hasn’t made the top 10 list since 2003, despite the fact that the final Harry Potter installment was not published until 2007.
First Lines
From The Hunger, by Charles Beaumont, one of the short stories in “Best American Noir of the Century,” edited by James Ellroy and Otto Penzler
Now with the sun almost gone, the sky looked wounded — as if a gigantic razor had been drawn across it, slicing it deep. It bled richly. And the wind, which came down from High Mountain, cool as rain, sounded a little like children crying: a soft, unhappy kind of sound, rising and falling.
Afraid, somehow, it seems to Julia. Terribly afraid.
She quickened her step. I’m an idiot, she thought, looking away from the sky. A complete idiot. That’s why I’m frightened now; and if anything happens — which it won’t, and can’t — then I’ll have no one to blame but myself.
She shifted the bag of groceries to her other arm and turned, slightly. There was no one in sight, except old Mr. Hannaford, pulling in his newspaper stands, preparing to close up the drugstore, and Jake Spiker, barely moving across to the Blue Haven for a glass of beer: no one else.
But even if she got nearly all the way home, she could scream and someone would hear her. Who would be fool enough to try anything right out in the open? Not even a lunatic. Besides, it wasn’t dark yet, not technically, anyway.
Independent Best Sellers
Fiction
1. Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen
2. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, by Stieg Larsson
3. The Help, by Kathryn Stockett
4. Save Haven, by Nicholas Sparks
5. Room, by Emma Donoghue
Nonfiction
1. The Grand Design, by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
2. S— My Dad Says, by Justin Halpern
3. A Journey, by Tony Blair
4. The Wave, by Susan Casey
5. True Prep, by Chip Kidd and Lisa Birnbach
